4/01/2012

Is that a gun in your bra, or are you just happy to see me?

When I was a tween my mother took me for, what I can only assume is, a ritual right of passage for every New York City raised girl entering womanhood: My first bra fitting. No, we didn't go to some well lit mall store where a twenty-something used a pink tape measure, in the privacy of a well lit, spacious fitting room. No. In a four story brick building, (that was new in the 1920s) on the lower east side of manhattan, (or Brooklyn, was it?) we walked up a flight of stairs and enter a 150 square foot studio apartment. It was crammed with the following: two or three square shaped Eastern European women (probably my mother's age but resembling a long ago generation), stacks of small boxes (imagine shoe boxes for ballet slippers) stretching from floor to ceiling, piles of lace, elastic straps and cups of varying sizes. All of this was lit by just one exposed 60-watt bulb.

My awkward, 12-year-old body was sent into a corner to disrobe behind a curtian, while the women pull me some options. The use of the curtian is still unclear to me because as I remove my clothes and put my arms through the first set of straps, it is ripped back so the sales lady could give me a proper fitting. I attempted to hide behind my gangly arms, but it was no use. She poked and tugged, and then decided the first one was "no good". I was strapped into another undergarment and then into another, at which point she paused to yell something to her staff. (I can only assume she was addressing them, because I am sure that neither my mother nor myself were familiar with whatever language they were squawking.)

Eventually, she slapped me on the back and pushed me into the middle of the store for my mother's approval. (In my memory I was in nothing but my underwear, though, looking back, I can't imagine why I would have had to remove my pants.) "Good?" she asked my mother, who nodded before I was shoved back into the corner to dress. "I guess I'm wearing this one home," I thought. A number of the items considered "good," were purchased, placed in a brown paper bag (not a brown shopping bag with handles but a large version of a brown lunch bag) and we headed home. The whole event probably took five minutes but in my memory it was an entire Sunday.

As I sit here now, with a Flash Bang Holster in one hand and a bra from Target in the other, I wonder how these women would react if I told them I was looking for a bra that would hold in place, not only me, but a Ruger LCR.